segunda-feira, 20 de dezembro de 2010

Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France.
Her father was a ship’s captain. Before Anna turned one, he had left her mother. After being raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four, she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as “terribly wanting to be loved” and made numerous attempts as a child to run away from home.
She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials and short films. She came to Paris in 1958 at age 17 where she met Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel, who convinced her to change her name to Anna Karina.

As a rising fashion model, she was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Her first film appearance, although unauthorized, dates from 1959, when a soap advertisement in which… read more

"Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France.

Her father was a ship’s captain. Before Anna turned one, he had left her mother. After being raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four, she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as “terribly wanting to be loved” and made numerous attempts as a child to run away from home.

She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials and short films. She came to Paris in 1958 at age 17 where she met Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel, who convinced her to change her name to Anna Karina.

As a rising fashion model, she was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Her first film appearance, although unauthorized, dates from 1959, when a soap advertisement in which she appeared as a model was included near the end of Guy Debord’s On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time. The image was accompanied by Debord’s voice-over “The advertisements during intermissions are the truest reflection of an intermission from life.” According to Godard’s biographer, Colin Macabe, Godard was in the middle of casting his debut feature film, A bout de souffle, that same year when he saw Karina in a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds. He offered her an important part in the film, which she turned down because of a nude scene. When Godard questioned her about her refusal, referring to the supposed nudity in the Palmolive ads, she is said to have replied “Are you mad? I was fully clothed in those ads — the soapsuds went up to my neck. It was in your mind that I was undressed.” The character Godard had reserved for her did not appear in the film. However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in Le Petit Soldat (1960).

Godard and Karina married on 3 March 1961, during the shooting of Une femme est une femme, and divorced in 1968.

Karina was awarded best actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 1961 for her interpretation of the character Angela in the film Une femme est une femme. Her acting career was not however limited to Godard’s films, and she went on to a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Her role in Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Diderot (1967) by Jacques Rivette is considered by some as her best performance. She also acted in Luchino Visconti’s L’Etranger.

In 1973 she made her directing debut in Vivre Ensemble in which she also acted. She wrote and acted in Last Song in 1987. More recently, she appeared in Haut, Bas, Fragile (1995) by Jacques Rivette and sang in The Truth About Charlie.

Karina has also maintained an important singing career. At the beginning of the 1960s, she scored a major hit with “Sous le soleil exactement” and “Roller Girl”, both songs taken from the musical comedy “Anna” by Serge Gainsbourg in which she sings seven songs alongside Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Brialy. More recently, she recorded an album entitled “Une histoire d’amour” with Philippe Katerine, which was followed up by a concert tour. Karina has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. In 2005 she released “Chansons de films”, a collection of songs sung in movies. She is scheduled to write, direct and star in “Dame de Coeur”, a musical road movie to be filmed in Montreal."

sábado, 18 de dezembro de 2010

"Truth is the subjective development of that which is at once both new and universal. New: that which is unforeseen by the order of creation. Universal: that which can interest, rightly, every human individual, according to his pure humanity."

terça-feira, 14 de dezembro de 2010

"We can trace sushi's origin back to the 4th century BC in Southeast Asia. As a preserved food, the salted fish, fermented with rice, was an important source of protein. The cleaned and gutted fish were kept in rice so that the natural fermentation of the rice helped preserve the fish. This type of sushi is called nare-zushi, and was taken out of storage after a couple of months of fermentation, and then only the fish was consumed while the rice was discarded.

Over time, it spread throughout China, and later, around the 8th century AD, in the Heian period, it was introduced into Japan. Since Japanese preferred to eat rice together with fish, the sushi, called seisei-zushi, became popular at the end of Muromachi period. This type of sushi was consumed while the fish was still partly raw and the rice had not lost its flavor. In this way, sushi became more of a cuisine rather than a way to preserve food.

Later in Edo era, Japanese began making haya-zushi, which was created as a way to eat both rice and fish; this dish was unique to Japanese culture. Instead of being only used for fermentation, rice was mixed with vinegar and combined not only with fish but also with various vegetables and dried preserved foods. Today, each region of Japan still preserves its own unique taste by utilizing local products in making different kinds of sushi that have been passed on for generations.

At the beginning of the19th century, when Tokyo was still called Edo, the food service industry was mostly dominated by mobile food stalls, from which nigiri-zushi originated. Edomae, which literally means "in front of Tokyo bay," was where the fresh fish and tasty seaweed for the nigiri-zushi were obtained. As a result, it was also called edomae-zushi, and it became popular among the people in Edo after Yohei Hanaya, a creative sushi chief, improved it to a simple but delicious food. Then, after the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, nigiri sushi spread throughout Japan as the skilled edomae-zushi chefs from Edo, who had lost their jobs, were diffused all over Japan.

In the 1980s, in the wake of increased health consciousness, sushi, one of the healthiest meals around, has gotten much more attention; consequently, sushi bars have increased in the United States. With the introduction of sushi machines, which combines the mass production of sushi with the delicate skills used by sushi chefs, making and selling sushi has become more accessible to countries all over the world."

quarta-feira, 1 de dezembro de 2010

Rudolph Valentino
"The Son of the Sheik Ahmed", 1926, his final film.

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy. (Coincidentally, the birth of film also occurred in 1895). Known as the "Latin Lover", he was one of the most popular stars of the 1920s, and one of the most recognized stars from the silent film era. He is best known for his work in The Sheik and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. On August 15, 1926, Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City, New York. He was hospitalized at the Polyclinic in New York and underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. The surgery went well and he seemed to be recovering when peritonitis set in and spread throughout his body. He died eight days later, at the age of 31 causing mass hysteria among his female fans, propelling him into icon status.

"One of the biggest stars of the silent screen, had a fascinating life. He had rebelled against his father to run with a fast crowd in Paris, where he learned the tango, the dance that would establish his career. Arriving in the U.S. almost penniless, he had resorted to petty theft and blackmail to survive. And his Hollywood career had been marked by two disastrous marriages, a rapid rise to stardom, fanatical fans and a sudden death that inspired suicides and a mob scene at his funeral. (...)"

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing"~ John Keats~

“Rudolph Valentino had an air of sadness. He wore his success gracefully, appearing almost subdued by it. He was intelligent, quiet and without vanity, and had great allure for women, but had little success with them, and those whom he married treated him rather shabbily. . . No man had greater attraction for women than Valentino; no man was more deceived by them." ~Charlie Chaplin~

"Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams." ~Rudolph Valentino~1923

segunda-feira, 29 de novembro de 2010

Erwin Blumenfeld (1897 – 1969) was a famous american photographer of german origin.

In the 1930s, he published collages mocking Adolf Hitler. In 1936, he emigrated to Paris. With the German occupation, he was interned in a concentration camp in 1940 because he was Jewish. In 1941, he could escape to the USA.

In the 1940s and 1950s he became famous for his fashion photography, working for VogueHarper's Bazaar, and also for artistic nude photography. In the 1960s, he worked on his autobiography which found no publisher because it was considered to be too ironic towards society, and was published only after his death. and

About Erwin Blumenfeld

Erwin Blumenfeld was a renowned photographer whose work is situated between 1930 and 1969. He was born in Berlin on 26 January 1897, moved to Holland late 1918, and started a professional career in photography in 1934. He moved to France in 1936. From 1937 to 1939, he published in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. When the Second World War broke out, he was interned in French camps as an alien, but was eventually allowed to leave for New York in 1941. He became a US citizen in 1946. His more personal work is in black and white; his commercial work in fashion, much for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, is mostly in color. In both media he was a great innovator. In black and white he did all his work personally in the dark room. In color he drew on his extensive background in classical and modern painting. He married Lena Citroen in Holland in 1921 and had three children there: Lisette, Henry Alexander and Frank Yorick. He died in Rome on July 4th, 1969.

Anna Pavlova was the illegitimate daughter of a laundry-woman. Her father was probably a young Jewish soldier and businessman. When she saw The Sleeping Beauty performed, Anna Pavlova decided to become a dancer, and entered the Imperial Ballet School at ten. She worked very hard there, and on graduation began to perform at the Maryinsky Theatre, debuting on September 19, 1899.

In 1907, Anna Pavlova began her first tour, to Moscow, and by 1910 was appearing at the Metropolitan Opera House in America. When, in 1914, she was traveling through Germany on her way to England when Germany declared war on Russia, her connection to Russia was for all intents broken.

For the rest of her life, Anna Pavlova toured the world with her own company and kept a home in London, where her exotic pets were constant company when she was there. Victor Dandré, her manager, was also her companion, and may have been her husband (she deliberately clouded this issue).

While her contemporary, Isadora Duncan, introduced revolutionary innovations to dance, Anna Pavlova remained largely committed to the classic style. She was known for her daintiness, frailness, lightness and both wittiness and pathos.

Her last world tour was in 1928-29 and her last performance in England in 1930. Anna Pavlova appeared in a few silent films: one, The Immortal Swan, she shot in 1924 but it was not shown until after her death -- it originally toured theaters in 1935-1936 in special showings, then was released more generally in 1956.

terça-feira, 23 de novembro de 2010

Picture: Steve McCurry; published in National Geographic magazine, 1985.

A Life Revealed

Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story.

By Cathy Newman

Photograph by Steve McCurry

She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since. The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees. The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew her name. In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn't her. No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her. It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her. Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.

Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. "She's had a hard life," said McCurry. "So many here share her story." Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century. Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away. "There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war," a young Afghan merchant said in the 1985 National Geographic story that appeared with Sharbat's photograph on the cover. She was a child when her country was caught in the jaws of the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction smothered countless villages like hers. She was perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night the dead were buried. And always, the sound of planes, stabbing her with dread. "We left Afghanistan because of the fighting," said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in the narrative of her life. He is a straight line of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. "The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice." Shepherded by their grandmother, he and his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week they moved through mountains covered in snow, begging for blankets to keep warm. "You never knew when the planes would come," he recalled. "We hid in caves." The journey that began with the loss of their parents and a trek across mountains by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living with strangers. "Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult to live in the cramped surroundings of a refugee camp," explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as interpreter for McCurry and the television crew. "There is no privacy. You live at the mercy of other people." More than that, you live at the mercy of the politics of other countries. "The Russian invasion destroyed our lives," her brother said. It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? "Each change of government brings hope," said Yusufzai. "Each time, the Afghan people have found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their friends and saviors." In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fighting, Sharbat Gula went home to her village in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. To live in this earthen-colored village at the end of a thread of path means to scratch out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some walnut trees, a stream that spills down the mountain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water. Here is the bare outline of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage.

domingo, 21 de novembro de 2010

"Blue roses, often portrayed in literature and art as a symbol of love and prosperity to those who seek it, do not exist within nature, due to genetic limitations being imposed upon natural variance. Traditionally, white roses have been dyed blue to produce a blue appearance; in 2004, researchers have used genetic modification to create blue pigmented roses. A blue rose is traditionally a flower of the genus Rosa (family Rosaceae) that presents blue-to-violet pigmentation and also the Morganus Clarke sunflower seed disposition, instead of the more common red or white variety."

quinta-feira, 18 de novembro de 2010

Anna Pavlova was a russian ballerina. She studied at the Imperial Ballet School, St. Petersburg and joined Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg in 1899, was made prima ballerina in 1906.

Made several guest appearances in Europe in 1907. Was a guest artist with the Ballets Russes in 1909, partnering, among others, Vaslav Nijinsky. Resigned from the Imperial Ballet in 1913 and never returned to Russia. Founded her own company and toured the world with it for the rest of her life.

Anna Pavlova inspired at least three generations of women dancers, and is considered the best female dancer of all time, on a scale with Nijinsky. Michel Fokine created The Dying Swan for her, a role she will always be remembered in. Since 1974 her residence in London has been the Anna Pavlova Memorial Museum and the headquarters of the Pavlova Society. She died of pneumonia three days after insisting on performing in Paris instead of seeing a doctor or resting.

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